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utility." In support of this solicitation, an agent was appointed to repair to England; and, to defray the expenses of the mission, a tax of four pounds of the best tobacco was levied upon every male who was above sixteen years and had been in the colony a twelvemonth. The commissioner unfortunately died on his passage to Europe. The colony continued to entreat the king not to give credit to the declarations in favor of the truly miserable years of Sir Thomas Smythe's government, and to repel the imputations on that of Southampton and Ferrar as malicious.

In vain was it attempted, by means of intimidation and promises of royal favor, to obtain a petition for the revocation of the charter. Under that charter the assembly was itself convened; and, after prudently rejecting a proposition which might have endangered its own existence, it proceeded to memorable acts of independent legislation.

The rights of property were strictly maintained against arbitrary taxation. "The governor shall not lay any taxes or ympositions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, other way than by the authority of the general assembly, to be levyed and ymployed as the said assembly shall appoynt." Virginia, the oldest colony, set the great example of a just and firm legislation on the management of the public money. The rights of personal liberty were asserted, and the power of the executive circumscribed. The several governors had in vain attempted, by penal statutes, to promote the culture of corn; the true remedy was now discovered by the colonial legislature. "For the encouragement of men to plant store of corn, the price shall not be stinted, but it shall be free for every man to sell it as deare as he can." The reports of controversies in England rendered it necessary to provide for the public tranquillity by an express enactment "that no person within the colony, upon the rumor of supposed change and alteration, presume to be disobedient to the present government." These laws, so judiciously framed, show how readily, with the aid of free discussion, men become good legislators on their own con

cerns.

While the royal London commissioners were urging the Virginians to renounce their right to the privileges which they

exercised so well, the English parliament was in session; and a gleam of hope revived in the company, as in April, 1624, Ferrar presented their elaborate petition for redress to the grand inquest of the kingdom. The house of commons took up the business reluctantly, and appointed the twenty-eighth of April for its consideration. But on that day, before any progress was made, there came a letter from the king: "That he both already had, and would also hereafter take the affair of the Virginia company into his own most serious consideration and care; and that, by the next parliament, they should all see he would make it one of his masterpieces, as it well deserved to be." The house assented by a general silence, "but not without soft muttering that any other business might in the same way be taken out of the hands of parliament." Sir Edwin Sandys was able to secure for the staple of Virginia complete protection in the English market against foreign tobacco, by a petition from the commons, which was followed by a royal proclamation. On the sixteenth of June, 1621, the last day of the Trinity term, judgment was given against the treasurer and company, and the patents were cancelled; but not till the company had fulfilled its high destiny by conceding irrevocably a liberal form of government to Englishmen in Virginia.

Meantime, commissioners arrived from the colony, and made their report to the king. They enumerated the disasters which had befallen the infant settlement; they eulogized the soil and the climate; they held up the plantations as of great national importance, and an honorable monument of the reign. of King James; and they expressed a preference for the original constitution of 1606. Supported by their advice, the king resolved himself to "take care for the government of the country." In its domestic government and franchises no immediate change was made. Sir Francis Wyatt, though he had been an ardent friend of the London company, was, in August, confirmed in office; and he and his council were only empowered to govern "as fully and amplye as any governor and council resident there, at any time within the space of five years now last past." This term of five years was precisely the period of representative government; and the limi

tation formally sanctioned the continuance of popular assemblies. The king, in appointing the council in Virginia, refused to nominate the embittered partisans of the court faction, and formed the administration on the principles of accommodation. But death prevented the royal legislator from preparing for the colony a code of fundamental laws.

CHAPTER IX.

RESTRICTIONS ON COLONIAL COMMERCE.

ASCENDING the throne on the twenty-seventh of March, 1625, in his twenty-fifth year, Charles I. inherited the principles and was governed by the favorite of his father. The rejoicings in consequence of his recent nuptials with a Bourbon princess, and preparations for a parliament, left him little leisure for American affairs. In his eager pursuit of a revenue for the crown, his first Virginia measure was a proclamation, issued within a fortnight of his accession; it confirmed to Virginia and the Somer isles the exclusive supply of the British market with tobacco. After a few days a new proclamation appeared, in which he announced his fixed resolution of becoming, through his agents, the sole factor of the planters. When, early in 1626, Wyatt retired, the reappointment of Sir George Yeardley was in itself a guarantee that, as "the former interests of Virginia were to be kept inviolate," so the representative government would be maintained; for by Yeardley it had been introduced. In his commission, in which William Clayborne, described as "a person of quality and trust," is named as secretary, the monarch expressed his desire to encourage and perfect the plantation; "the same means that were formerly thought fit for the maintenance of the colony" were continued; and the power of the governor and council was limited, as in the commission of Wyatt, by a reference to the usages of the last five years. The words were interpreted as favoring the wishes of the colonists; and King Charles, intent only on a revenue, confirmed the existence of a popular assembly. Virginia rose rapidly in public esteem; in 1627 a

thousand emigrants arrived; and there was an increasing demand for the products of its soil.

In November of that year the career of Yeardley was closed by death. Posterity retains a grateful recollection of the man who first convened a representative assembly in the western hemisphere; the colonists, in a letter to the privy council, pronounced a eulogy on his virtues. The day after his burial, and in the absence of John Harvey who was named in Yeardley's commission as his eventual successor, Francis West was elected governor; for the council was authorized to elect the governor, "from time to time, as often as the case should require."

In the preceding August the king, by a letter of instructions to the governor and council, offered to contract for the whole crop of tobacco, desiring, at the same time, that an assembly might be convened to consider his proposal. In March, 1628, the assembly, in its reply, which was signed by the governor, by five members of the council, and by thirtyone burgesses, acquiesced in the royal monopoly, but protested against its being farmed out to individuals. The Virginians, happier than the people of England, enjoyed a faithful representative government; and, through resident planters who composed the council, they repeatedly made choice of their own governor. When West designed to embark for Europe, his place was supplied by the election of John Pott, the best surgeon and physician in the colony.

ernor.

No sooner had the news of the death of Yeardley reached England than the king issued a commission to Harvey as govThe instrument, while it renewed the limitations which had previously been set to the executive authority, permitted the governor to supply all vacancies occurring in the council in Virginia, subject to approval.

In 1629, after the appointment of Harvey and before his return to America, Lord Baltimore visited Virginia. Its government pursued him as a Romanist, and would not suffer him to plant within its jurisdiction. On the other hand, the people of New Plymouth were invited to abandon their cold and sterile abode for the milder regions on Delaware bay-a plain indication that Puritans were not as yet molested.

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